The making of a MovementScreen Pt2 – foundational principles

In The making of a MovementScreen – a distilling of ideas. Pt1 we discuss some of our motivators for creating the MovementScreen. Here I want to share with you some of the foundational principles that led to the selection of the nine movements that comprise the screen. They need to address the following key concepts:

The MovementScreen should be able to be carried out with minimal to no equipment, so that it can be easily applied in all exercise settings, such as outdoors or various indoor environments. We ended up incorporating only a dowel rod which is easily accessible. It is used to enable the tester to better see movement deviations (as in the single leg squat, or thoracic rotation); and to help replicate common movements that would require a bar in a gym setting (as in the back-squat, or the deadlift-with-bent-over-row).

The Movement Screen should incorporate foundational movements that represent common exercises and movement patterns performed, such as pushing, pulling, squatting, lunging, bending, twisting, and stepping.

The screen should represent movement capacities such as stability, mobility, symmetry, balance and strength across the main movement patterns.

That all large joint complexes can be analysed for all movement capacities.

Our aim all along is that these principles give you a significant and valuable ‘so what’ to the screening results you get when conducting movement screens on your clients. We don’t just want you to end up with a ‘score’ that may not provide you with a clear path of corrective action for your clients. Rather, the MovementScreen has been built to provide you with many layers of information to help you provide a better programming and educational service to your clients. But more on this in the next instalment of “the making of a movement screen”!